The next version will look like a “Apple product,” the CEO says.
A little over 180 days have passed since Worldcoin went live to the public. Alex Blania, CEO and co-founder of Tools for Humanity, told TechCrunch that the Orb device, which looks like something from the future, is getting an upgrade.
Blania told the crowd at a StrictlyVC event on Wednesday, “The new orb is coming” and the “next iterations will look quite different.” He said that he started working for the business about four years ago, but the Orb had been designed before he started working there.
The next Orb will come out in the first half of this year. Blania said it will have different colors and “form factors” to make it look “much friendlier.” Overall, it is going to look “way [more] tuned down” and similar to “an Apple product,” he added.
Tools for Humanity is the company that made Worldcoin, the cryptocurrency project that Blania, Sam Altman, and Max Novendstern helped to start. a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, and other backers have given it about $250 million so far.
The company is famous in the crypto and venture capital worlds for its strange Orb device, which scans people’s irises and gives them a “World ID” that gives them access to Worldcoin’s app and a digital passport. The goal of the identification process is to make sure that people are who they say they are and to stop people from making multiple accounts.
Some people in the U.S. are “obsessed” with the shape of the Orb, which is a joke that makes sense. Its main product is a five-pound product that looks like something from a sci-fi movie and is about the size of a bowling ball. He also said that people “either hate it or love it.”
Some people may not believe it, but at the StrictlyVC event in downtown San Francisco, a Tools for Humanity employee who was working a booth said that “couple dozen” people scanned their irises in return for a World ID. A worker also said that the new Orb has been put through “field testing.”
As part of its beta testing, the project worked on getting people to use it in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Nairobi, Kenya; Lisbon, Portugal; and Bangalore, India. Because of this, it got some bad press from people who said it was aimed at developing countries. While that was going on, Worldcoin tried to grow its footprint by visiting big cities like Tokyo, Miami, New York City, and San Francisco last year.
The website for Worldcoin says that more than 190,000 new accounts have been made in the last week, and a total of 3.13 million people have signed up for the service.
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“The thesis is very simple. It’s a race to get billions of people as quickly as possible, Blania said.
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